1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments of the present invention relate to a translation system and, more particularly, to a language translation apparatus which translates from one language (original language) to another language (target language) by the use of a computer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A general description of how the computer translation from one language to another language is carried out be explained. As shown in FIG. 1, a sentence of the original or source language is processed so that a word-to-word dictionary look-up is obtained. Next, the source language is analyzed in various steps, which include a: morpheme analysis, a syntactic analysis, a semantic analysis, and a context analysis in order to obtain an intervening language which does not belong to any existing language, but the intervening language is understood only by the computer. The steps carried out in each analysis will be further understood from Table 1 which is shown below.
TABLE 1 ______________________________________ Analysis Steps Analysis ______________________________________ Dictionary look- Find a word in a dictionary and provide up and morpheme its translation as well as other word analysis information, such as verb, noun, adverb, adjective, plural, singular, tense, person, etc, according to the stored grammar text. Syntactic Find a relationship between the words, analysis clauses and/or phrases to determined one or more possible sentence contructions, each analyzed in a form of a tree structure. Semantic analysis Select one sentence construction which is most appropriate from the viewpoint of the sentence meaning. Context analysis Understanding the theme of the sentence and the clarifying the vague expressions. ______________________________________
After the intervening language is obtained, the computer forms and generates a sentence in the target language through the steps of: context generation; semantic generation; syntactic generation; and morpheme generation, which is similar to the above described analysis.
The above described method of the computer translation is called a pivot method. The pivot method follows the steps formulated by the solid line arrows shown in FIG. 1 in order to obtain the intervening language and before finally obtaining the target language.
Another translation method is called a transfer method. The transfer method takes a short cut in the steps which are formulated by one of the chain line arrows in order to complete the translation without obtaining the intervening language.
There have been a number of translation apparatuses proposed which can translate an original language, sentence by sentence, into a target language so that the translated result will be displayed on a screen by the point or transfer method.
A problem in the prior art translation apparatuses is that when the translation is carried out, no indication of the translation process is produced. Therefore, the operator cannot be certain whether the apparatus is really proceeding with the translation, or the apparatus has made an error and has stopped the translation. Although the translation time depends on the hardware, the software and the length and the complexity of the sentence to be translated, a translation procedure by a computer for one sentence usually takes from several seconds to several tens of minutes. Therefore, the operator may feel apprehensive about the state of the translation process, particularly when the apparatus is taking a long time to complete the translation of one sentence.
The same problem is encountered when the translation of a number of sentences are carried out. In this case, the operator is not certain of which sentence is being processed by the translation method.